Lydia McGrew Answered! Are the Gospels Greco-Roman Biographies?

00:00

Lydia McGrew Answered! Are the Gospels Greco-Roman Biographies?

June 10, 2024

In this episode, part 2 of 8 in a series, Dr. Licona answers Lydia McGrew's contention that the Gospels are not affiliated with Greco-Roman biography. He demonstrates that she misinterprets ancient writers on the subject, fails to consider the degree of literacy required for composition, and misinterprets other scholars on the subject. These audio clips are taken from Dr. Licona’s YouTube channel, originally published in 2020.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Risen Jesus podcast with Dr. Mike Licona. Dr. Licona is professor of New Testament studies at Houston Christian University, and he is the president of Risen Jesus, a 501c3 non-profit organization. In this episode, part 2 of 8 in a series, Dr. Licona answers Lydia McGrew's contention that the Gospels are not affiliated with Greco-Roman biography.

He demonstrates that she misinterprets ancient writers on the subject, fails to consider the degree of literacy required for composition, and misinterprets other scholars on the subject. During the 1970s, a few New Testament scholars began to propose that the Gospels were ancient biographies, specifically Greco-Roman biographies. In my book, I provide 10 qualities, many of which are usually present in Greco-Roman biography.

I won't take time to articulate these here. Those interested may read them on pages 3 and 4 of my book, and if you don't have my book, you can find them in the Look Inside feature of my book on Amazon. Since the Gospels focus on the life of Jesus, they are some sort of biography.

Most scholars think they are affiliated with Greco-Roman biography. Why Greco-Roman instead of Jewish biography? Well, for some reason, Jews were fairly silent in writing biographies during that era. We only know of four, Philo's Life of Moses, his life of Abraham, Life of Joseph, and Josephus's autobiography, all written in the first century.

In fact, according to the late Jewish scholar, Louis Feldman, after these four, we do not find biographies written by Jews until modern times. Philo's Life of Abraham and Life of Joseph differ from his life of Moses, whereas the Life of Moses is exclusively interested in the life of its main character, as is typical on Greco-Roman biography. The lives of Abraham and Joseph are also interested in the lives of others, such as Enosh, Enoch, and Noah.

Whereas the Life of Moses generally avoids allegory and conforms more closely to Greco-Roman biography. Like Philo's Life of Moses, the Gospels more closely resemble Greco-Roman biographies than Philo's Lives of Abraham and Joseph, or Josephus's autobiography. The average length of Greco-Roman biography was between 10 and 25,000 words.

The Gospels fit within that range, being 11,000 to 19,000 words. Philo's Life of Moses is a little longer than average at close to 31,000 words. However, the autobiography of Josephus is nearly 89,000 words.

In short, although three of the four Gospels were written by Jews, they share a lot in common with Greco-Roman literature. Some people get hung up on the term Greco-Roman biography. Philo's Life of Moses is the only Jewish biography similar to the Gospels and exhibits the use of several of the same compositional devices we observe in Greco-Roman biography.

In his essay, Philo's adaptation of the Bible in his Life of Moses, Brian McGee notes instances where Philo employs transferral, elaboration, chronological displacement, and changes the explicit chronological order of events. So if you're uncomfortable with the term Greco-Roman biography, just think of it as ancient biography, since the only Jewish biography close and formed to the Gospels has many of the same types of differences and literary devices we find in Greco-Roman biographies resulting from compositional devices. Now, Lydia McGrew does not think the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography.

She asks the following question, do the Gospels belong to or resemble the genre of Greco-Roman biography in the informative sense that the authors were probably influenced by the conventions of this genre and chose to write their Gospels according to the conventions of this genre? She answers no for two reasons. First, she says Burridge's arguments are utterly unconvincing. However, a very large and heterogenous majority of New Testament scholars have found the arguments of Burridge and others quite convincing.

Of course, this does not make them right, but such a large and heterogenous majority should not be dismissed too quickly. So let's look at McGrew's second reason. She says there's an antecedent improbability that the authors of Matthew, Mark, and John had ever encountered Greco-Roman biography.

She writes, the evidence that Matthew, Mark, and John were written by their traditionally ascribed authors tends to disconfirm the thesis that they were influenced by Greco-Roman literature. How likely is it that Matthew, the tax collector, John, Mark, Peter, or even John the son of Zebedee would have read or heard the earlier writers of biography discussed by Burridge such as Xenophon, Socrates, Sateris, and Nepos, and that they would have desired to emulate a specific Greco-Roman genre? For McGrew, only Luke may have been somewhat influenced by Greco-Roman genre. McGrew did not consider the huge gap that exists between the extent of literacy required to be a tax collector with that for producing a biography as sophisticated as Matthew's gospel.

There may be an even greater gap between the literacy required of a fisherman and that of one who could write John's gospel. McGrew never considers whether the traditional authors would have needed an enlisted help in writing their compositions. It's not a black and white matter of being either very skilled in writing or illiterate.

My friend Randy Richards is an expert on Scrabble practices. His book, Paul and First Century Letter Writing, Secretary's Composition and Collection, Broke New Ground. Randy once told me of an exercise he does with his students.

He gives each of them a piece of papyrus, ink, and a short read to dip in the ink. He then asked the students to begin writing the words he's about to dictate. Paul and Apostle, one minute later, buy the will of God.

It quickly becomes apparent that Paul very likely did not dictate his letter's word for word. Richards says that, in the first century, shorthand was in its infancy stages and a few who would have been proficient at it were in Rome. Richards shows how secretaries were employed in three roles in their services, transcriber, contributor, and composer.

Paul's secretaries who assisted him in writing letters would have most likely taken notes from Paul, composed the letter, had Paul read it, and provide feedback. Then proceed to write the final, which would have been sent only after Paul had given his approval. Several of Paul's letters suggest he made use of a secretary in his letter writing.

At the end of 1 Corinthians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, Paul says that he wrote the greeting with his own hand. This suggests that a secretary played some role in the composition of those letters. But the crown jewel of Paul's letters is Romans.

Its literary quality far surpasses that of his other letters. So it's very likely that Paul's secretary for that letter performed a significant amount of editing. His name is Tertius, and he mentions his involvement in Romans, chapter 16, verse 22.

I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Now, since Paul, who was highly educated, made regular use of a secretary, wouldn't we expect that Matthew, Mark, and John would also have used secretaries when composing their Gospels? And wouldn't it be likely that those secretaries would have had at least an equal, if not an even greater role in the composition of their Gospels than Paul's secretaries had in the composition of his letters? After all, Matthew, Mark, and John were almost certainly less educated than Paul. Moreover, the Gospels are substantially longer than a letter, and they contain thematic focuses that have been recognized since the days of the early church.

Given the degree of literacy, their secretaries would have possessed. They would have been quite familiar with the literary conventions in play at the time. Moreover, the near-non-existence of biographies written by Jews in antiquity provides little to commend to the position that Jewish biography attempted to distinguish itself from Greco-Roman biography.

Of course, we can only speak here of plausibility, and that applies equally with McGrew's position. That said, in view of what I just discussed, I think McGrew's contention that the Jewish authors of Matthew, Mark, and John would not have been in a position to have been influenced by Greco-Roman biography has very little relevance, if any at all. McGrew thinks it's possible that Luke had encountered Greco-Roman literature, but she downplays it, contending his preface expresses his desire to be truthful, she writes.

He does show that he intends to write according to high standards of historical factuality. This intention may have been influenced by exposure to high standards of reliability in Greco-Roman history, in which case it does not support the conclusion that Luke would have used fictionalizing literary devices. McGrew merely assumes those using high standards of reliability would have rejected the use of compositional devices, which she tendentiously calls fictionalizing literary devices, many of which they had learned in the compositional textbooks.

I'll cover this in my next video. And what about how some of the finest historians practiced history writing? Salas used compositional devices, Tacitus used them, Plutarch used them. Furthermore, Josephus has something very similar to Luke pertaining to his high standards of reporting, while making use of many of the same compositional devices we find in Greco-Roman biography.

It may also be observed that Josephus did not live up to the standards he claimed for his writings. Lucian of Samusada lays out high standards historians are to follow while not practicing them as well in his work, The Passing of Peregrinus. So it's not simply a matter of what one states, we must judge and interpret the authors in light of what they do.

On page 88 of her book, McGrew quotes Colin Hemmer from his book, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Hemmer says, Luke's gospel shares much in common with Greco-Roman biography. However, he adds that since Greco-Roman biography was a fluid genre, Luke must be judged by his performance.

I'm in complete agreement here with Hemmer. Ancient biography was a fluid genre with characteristics that sometimes bleed over into other genres like history. Richard Burge says this in his book, What are the Gospels? An example is given by Christopher Pelling, and he notes that Plutarch's life of Caesar is a hybrid of biography and history, because it's not so much concerned with Caesar's character as it is with how Caesar became so popular among the Roman people.

Still, Classus's dulter regard Plutarch's life of Caesar is anything other than a biography. Casidus' Agricola is likewise a hybrid between biography and history, yet its size and focus on Agricola place it firmly within the genre of biography. So it's surprising to read McGrew's say of Hemmer's comments, these emphatically cautious comments could not be farther from Lacona's insistence that if the Gospels even have much in common with Boi, we should be surprised if they did not make use of transferal displacement and or other fact-altering literary devices, because they were part and parcel of that genre.

It's here that we observe one of McGrew's loaded terms, fact-altering literary devices. It's also one of many examples where we will see McGrew merely assuming that an author's view of accuracy, in this case Hemmer's view, is similar to hers and would not allow for the use of compositional devices. There's nothing in Hemmer's words that suggests he embraced McGrew's wooden concept of truth-telling and reporting.

To the contrary, as Classus's jail moles observed, a number of compositional devices are practically universal in ancient historiography. Now, let's revisit the question McGrew asked that I quoted at the beginning of this video. Do the Gospels belong to or resemble the genre of Greco-Roman Bios in the informative sense that the authors were probably influenced by the conventions of this genre and chose to write their Gospels according to the conventions of this genre? As I stated earlier, there are many reasons for thinking the Gospels share much in common with Greco-Roman biography.

Again, I share these on pages three and four of my book, and they appear in the look-and-side feature of my book on Amazon. We've observed that McGrew's contentions to the contrary fail to appreciate the extent of literacy required for writing a Gospel. Moreover, McGrew interprets what others say through the lens of her own thinking.

This results in her misinterpreting others and leads her to a conclusion that's at odds with a majority of even conservative New Testament scholars. Craig Blomberg, who was taking issue with only a few items in my book, wrote the following in his review of it. There is a broad scholarly consensus that the New Testament Gospels are biographies of Jesus and that they adopt many of the conventions of the ancient writing of history and biography.

Michael Lacona's new book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels, builds on this consensus with an impressive, detailed study of one important ancient Greek biographer, Plutarch. The majority of his observations involve very minor differences among Gospel parallels and are largely non-controversial, and the approach is scarcely novel. Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, visit RisenJesus.com, where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the reliability of the Gospels and the resurrection of Jesus. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast, visit Dr. Lacona's YouTube channel, or consider becoming a monthly supporter. This has been the RisenJesus Podcast, a ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona.